We descended deeper and deeper, and with every flight of rusted stairs the air grew heavier.

  Up above, in the ventilation shafts, the wind had tried to strip the skin from our bones. Down here, the atmosphere pressed on our shoulders like a wet, scorching blanket.

  The walls were sweating.

  Large drops of condensation—dirty and oily—ran down the pipes and gathered into puddles on the floor. The whole place smelled of boiled metal and sulfur.

  “Ambient temperature: forty-eight degrees Celsius,” Zeno rasped. “Cooling system efficiency reduced to sixty percent. My radiators are clogged with dust. Cleaning required.”

  “Hold on,” I wiped sweat from my eyes. “We’ll find some cleaner water and hose you down.”

  Ephrem was breathing heavily, wheezing through his teeth. His face was flushed crimson, his old shirt glued to his body with sweat. For an old man, this kind of heat was deadly.

  “Hang in there, old man,” I said, supporting him by the elbow.

  My titanium arm was hot to the touch. Metal absorbed heat faster than flesh, and the mounts in my shoulder were starting to burn.

  We stepped into a massive chamber filled with a labyrinth of pipes.

  The Boiler Hall.

  An ancient heat exchanger of the City.

  The hum here sounded like we had crawled into the belly of some colossal beast. Pressure gauges covered the walls, buried beneath layers of soot, their needles trembling faintly.

  Then the hum changed.

  A speaker crackled somewhere above.

  “Too hot?” Silas’s voice filtered through static, but the smile in it was unmistakable. “Good. Heat makes metal soft. Malleable.”

  We froze, scanning the room.

  There were dozens of speakers. The sound came from everywhere.

  “Do you really think you’re special, Iron?” the Inquisitor continued. “Your robot thinks it has a soul. You think you have a gift. But you’re both just errors in the code. Valerius wants to erase you.”

  A metallic slam echoed through the hall.

  Heavy blast doors sealed shut in front of us and behind us.

  We were trapped.

  “And I,” Silas went on calmly, “want to study you.”

  “Pressure rising in the system,” Zeno reported. His voice dropped lower as the internal fans screamed at full speed.

  I glanced at the nearest gauge.

  The needle was crawling steadily into the red.

  “He’s closed the steam outlets,” I said.

  The boilers would overheat.

  Silas confirmed it immediately.

  “You have ten minutes before this chamber becomes a pressure cooker. If you’re such a brilliant engineer, boy… release the pressure. But remember—steam doesn’t forgive mistakes.”

  I looked around.

  The hall was enormous.

  The pressure relief valves were high above us on the upper tiers, wrapped in clouds of white vapor. The temperature up there had to be near a hundred degrees.

  Panic punched into my skull.

  My heart slammed against my ribs.

  My hand twitched toward my temple.

  The Will to Live.

  The skill would show me the safe path. It would highlight the valves, calculate the timing.

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  Easy.

  I looked at Ephrem.

  The old man had sunk to the floor, leaning against a cold return pipe. He was watching me.

  There was fear in his eyes.

  Not fear of death.

  Fear of what I would become if I shut myself off again.

  “No,” I said aloud.

  “I won’t give him that satisfaction.”

  I yanked a heavy adjustable wrench from my belt.

  “Zeno!” I shouted over the hissing steam. “Do you see the main valve?”

  “Height: twelve meters. Sector B. But my servos… overheating at eighty-five percent. I may fail at any moment.”

  “You won’t fail!”

  I splashed the last of my canteen water over his back radiators.

  The water evaporated instantly with a hiss, but the robot seemed to breathe easier.

  “Get up there and hold the rod! Just hold it—don’t let it close completely!”

  Zeno nodded and began climbing the vertical ladder, metal claws clanging against the rungs as he disappeared into the white vapor.

  “Ephrem!” I turned to the old man. “See that small valve with the blue mark? Turn it! Clockwise! As hard as you can! That’s the cooling circuit!”

  “Got it, malek!” the old man croaked, staggering toward the valve.

  Meanwhile I sprinted for the central pipeline.

  There was an emergency gate there.

  A huge wheel buried under rust.

  I climbed onto the catwalk.

  The heat slammed into my face so hard my lungs locked. It had to be seventy degrees here.

  My skin began to burn.

  I grabbed the wheel with both hands—flesh and titanium.

  The metal scorched even through the glove.

  My prosthetic arm heated instantly. The heat traveled inward—into bone, into nerves.

  Pain.

  Real, vicious pain.

  “Come on…” I growled through clenched teeth. “Turn, you bastard.”

  Silas was watching.

  I knew it.

  He was waiting for me to give up and activate my “god mode.”

  But I turned the wheel myself.

  I felt blisters ripping open on my left palm.

  Sweat flooded my eyes, salt burning them mercilessly.

  Grinding.

  The wheel moved a millimeter.

  “Critical overheating!” Zeno shouted from above. He hung from the valve, his chassis smoking.

  “Hold on!” I yelled.

  I leaned with my full weight.

  Hydraulics in the prosthetic screamed, compensating for my weakness.

  Titanium against rust.

  Will against physics.

  The wheel turned.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Then a deafening scream split the air.

  Steam—compressed to the limit—burst into the open pipe.

  Pressure dropped instantly.

  The gauge needle jerked backward.

  At the far end of the hall, a blast door clanged open.

  “Move!” I slid down the ladder, nearly twisting my ankle.

  I hauled Ephrem up—he was half-dead from the heat.

  Zeno dropped from above. His armor glowed red.

  We stumbled into the corridor beyond, where the air was cooler.

  I gulped it down greedily.

  Victory tasted like metal.

  We had done it.

  Without the skill.

  Without cheating.

  But Silas wasn’t finished with us.

  “Impressive,” his voice returned—this time without mockery.

  Only cold curiosity.

  “You endured pain. But can you endure fire?”

  A niche opened at the far end of the corridor.

  Something stepped out.

  It looked human.

  But it wore thick, crude armor made of ceramic plates.

  The face was hidden behind a solid mask with a narrow slit.

  In its hands was a heavy flamethrower connected by a hose to a tank on its back.

  “A Thermal Servitor…” Ephrem whispered.

  The stream of liquid fire erupted toward us.

  We barely managed to dive behind the corner.

  Flames licked the wall where we had stood seconds earlier, leaving a bubbling black scar on the concrete.

  “My weapons are ineffective,” Zeno said calmly. “Ceramic armor will withstand bullets. I cannot approach due to overheating.”

  We were trapped.

  Behind us—the boiling boiler hall.

  Ahead—the flamethrower.

  I scanned the corridor.

  Technical passage.

  Pipes ran along the ceiling.

  Red—steam.

  Blue…

  Water?

  Coolant?

  The servitor stepped around the corner.

  Slowly.

  He knew we had nowhere to go.

  The ignition trigger clicked.

  “The blue pipe,” I whispered. “Zeno. Can you punch through it with a shot?”

  “Negative. Wall thickness excessive. Armor-piercing round required.”

  I didn’t have a round.

  I had my arm.

  And the impulse-strike mode I’d programmed into the hydraulics back in the warehouse.

  “Distract him.”

  Zeno leaned out and fired a short burst at the servitor’s legs.

  The bullets ricocheted off the armor, but the enemy turned toward the robot.

  That was enough.

  I leapt from cover.

  Not toward the enemy.

  Toward the wall.

  I kicked off a crate, launching upward, extending my right arm.

  My fingers formed a wedge.

  I activated maximum piston pressure.

  The titanium fist smashed into the blue pipe directly above the servitor.

  Metal ruptured.

  A waterfall of icy, chemically scented liquid crashed down on him.

  A sharp crack echoed like a gunshot.

  The overheated ceramic armor couldn’t withstand the sudden temperature shock.

  The plates shattered across the shoulders and helmet, spiderweb cracks spreading instantly.

  The servitor staggered, blinded by steam.

  “Now!” I shouted.

  Zeno didn’t need a second invitation.

  He aimed at the largest crack in the helmet.

  One precise shot.

  The servitor collapsed like a sack of stones.

  The flamethrower clattered to the floor, its flame extinguished by the torrent of water.

  We stood in a puddle, soaked, filthy, shaking from the aftershock of terror.

  I approached the fallen enemy.

  Not a robot.

  Under the shattered mask was a human face.

  Emaciated.

  Eyes burned blind.

  Another victim of Silas’s experiments.

  A tablet hung from the servitor’s belt.

  I tore it free.

  The screen displayed a map.

  And a destination marker.

  Not an exit.

  A laboratory.

  “He wasn’t driving us to our deaths,” I said quietly, showing the screen to Ephrem and Zeno. “He was herding us.”

  “He wants us there.”

  I looked at my arm.

  The metal was cooling now, covered in condensation.

  I felt every scratch on it as if it were on my own skin.

  “We’re going to him,” I said firmly. “Not because he invited us.”

  “Because he won’t let us leave while he’s alive.”

  Ephrem nodded, leaning on his staff.

  The fear was gone from his eyes.

  Only grim determination remained.

  “Lead the way, malek,” he said. “Soup’s boiling. Time to visit the cook.”

  We moved deeper into Silas’s darkness.

  Behind us, the punctured pipe hissed endlessly.